The return of Carles Puigdemont to the fore, with a meeting with Yolanda Díaz and a conference in which he set his terms of negotiation – in particular an amnesty law drawn up before the investiture and the assurance that Junts will never renounce unilateralism – has raised the temperature Spanish politics and has spread the idea that a repeat of the elections cannot be ruled out. But in La Moncloa, where more information is handled than in other centers of power and there is fluid contact with junts after the successful negotiations around the congress table, they prefer to see the glass half full and cling to the willingness to negotiate of the former President of the Generalitat, since 2017 on the run from the Spanish justice system and now a member of the European Parliament, showed in his conference.
For the socialist part of the government, Puigdemont is proposing “a maximum program” that will not be the one that can ultimately be agreed upon. Above all, he makes it clear that he wants to negotiate the inauguration of Pedro Sánchez. And that alone is an important step forward for someone who until recently completely withdrew from the country’s political game and voted against virtually all of the coalition government’s laws. Those close to the PSOE Secretary General point out that the most important thing about Puigdemont’s speech is what he did not say: he did not set the self-determination referendum as an indispensable condition, something that would have made negotiations impossible. And that is a clear sign to the executive branch that there is room, even if nothing is easy.
The government went public on Tuesday to reassure its people and make it clear that the socialist positions and those of the Junts, a group that defends the self-determination referendum, independence and unilateralism, are “at opposite ends,” but This does not mean that they cannot agree on a number of points to achieve the installation of Sánchez, as they did before, so that the PSOE and Sumar, and not the PP and Vox, would have control of the congressional executive board. The speaker, Isabel Rodríguez, went to great lengths to avoid any specificity and did not address any of the specific conditions proposed by Puigdemont, particularly those of the amnesty law before the investiture vote. The socialist part of the government prefers that the negotiations proceed like those of the congressional committee, with total discretion and without knowledge of the initial conditions, in order to avoid making it impossible to return later. For this reason, all answers were general, with a repeated mantra: whatever is agreed will be in the Constitution. The Socialists do not speak directly about amnesty, but from their words it can be inferred that they assumed that if they wanted investiture, they would have to get a final financial relief from the process. In fact, Sánchez himself spoke openly on Monday about “turning the tide” and being “coherent” with what the coalition government did in the previous legislative period with the pardons and the reform of the criminal code to eliminate sedition and amend the crime of embezzlement has .
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But the Socialists seem particularly interested in the progressive electorate (which, according to the 40dB. poll published on Monday in EL PAÍS, is largely in favor of seeking investiture with the majority of the previous legislature and the Junts long before a grand coalition). Do not be alarmed by Puigdemont’s messages and especially by the harsh criticism from the opposition, which claims that Spain is experiencing a moment of democratic emergency. “We want to send a sign of calm,” said the executive spokesman at the press conference after the Council of Ministers on Tuesday. “Nobody believes that the wolf is coming anymore. It’s enough to scare the Spaniards. The government and President Sánchez have shown that they will enforce the constitution throughout Spain. It was with a PP government when someone wanted to ignore the constitution. Sánchez guaranteed fulfillment. We will approach the next legislative period on the basis of dialogue, the framework of the constitution and the goal of coexistence. In these five years of government it has been shown that the constitution has been respected and Catalonia is much better than it was five years ago, no matter how much they said that the wolf was coming, that Spain was falling apart, that we were undecided. They are not words. “These are facts,” Rodríguez concluded. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, a long-time judge sitting next to him, did not want to intervene as an expert in the legal debate about the constitutionality or non-constitutionality of a possible amnesty law.
In any case, the executive branch knows that the pressure will be very great in the coming weeks. PSOE personalities such as former Prime Minister Felipe González have come to the fore again. During an interview on Onda Cero on Tuesday, González returned to the spotlight to express his opposition to an agreement with Junts and to ensure that, in his opinion, an amnesty law does not fit into the constitution. The President of Castile-La Mancha, Emiliano García Page, was also very clear in his rejection on Monday. And they won’t be the only ones. “Whatever is done, if any, will be done with transparency, democracy and consistency with what we have done, what worked in Catalonia and, by the way, received majority support in the elections,” they emphasize in La Moncloa in response to González.
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The negotiations that will officially begin after the failure of the inauguration of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, but in reality are already underway, will be very complex. And no one guarantees success. But in La Moncloa they see Puigdemont putting aside his independence rhetoric, also intended for a world that the leader has told for years that there are no possible negotiations with an oppressive state, with the will to reach an agreement and space for a new legislature to be made. with Sánchez in government.
Any other option would lead to a repeat of the elections, which the PSOE still sees as the worst option as it means rolling the dice again, with the risk that this time the PP and Vox will join – they are four seats away from the Majority removed. absolutely with its support of UPN and CC – or that a very similar result will emerge leading to the same point. The negotiations will continue for many weeks and the PSOE trusts that Puigdemont and everyone else will now return to the discretion they have enjoyed in recent weeks. But none of the heads of state and government interviewed believe that the re-election is getting any closer after the former president’s speech. “Now the dance begins,” summarizes one minister. The ending still needs to be written.
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